"OG-3." The code glowed white on the management panel.
Allen leaned back in the second-to-last row of the Greyhound bus.
Outside the window, the orange streetlights of the New Jersey tollbooth stretched across his profile.
Light and shadow sliced across his face.
The man who built the accelerator. The man who begged him to dismantle the accelerator.
The same key.
The brightness of the management panel was turned down to its lowest setting.
A dark red eyeball in the lower left corner pulsated steadily. The Abyss watched.
It spoke no sound, interfered no matter what, it simply watched. Recording every decision he made.
Four underground cities operated synchronously in the background.
The "Railway Graveyard" in Washington had established a stable resonance link with the "Abyss Congress."
On the list of global anomalies sent by Robert, the red alert for the DC node had turned green.
The first cross-city node coverage was successful.
But the cursor on the memo interface remained after that code.
Fingers tapped on the virtual keyboard. Three lines of deduction.
First. Hawke is the leader of the Cleansers. The confrontation with him is to control the only variable that can disrupt the eruption.
Second. Hawke has betrayed them. The device is an old product he previously authorized to manufacture. He now wants to rectify the mistake.
Third. Omega-3 permissions have been stolen. Another force within GWA is manipulating everything.
Regardless of the cause, the countdown to the Cleansers' detonation is ticking.
The dungeons must be built.
The difference is, after these hundred dungeons are built, will this network be his own shield, or a knife in Hawke's hand?
The phone vibrates in his pocket.
Robert's encrypted text message.
"Checked the OG-3 authorization log. This code was last used fourteen months ago."
"One hundred and twenty 'core stabilizers' were manufactured. The official purpose is to assist the unstable natural dungeon core in restoring balance."
Allen replies: "What about the actual use?"
"GWA's registered stabilizer installation records only show ninety-three. The number issued and the actual allocation don't match."
"Twenty-seven extra." Twenty-seven.
Exactly the number of global outbreak nodes Hawke mentioned.
Allen's thumb hovered above the screen.
The same device. Adjusting the parameters to the left heals, to the right destroys.
One hundred and twenty were deployed. Ninety-three were used for stabilization. Twenty-seven were modified into accelerators.
Who gave the order to modify them?
The sound of a lighter grinding gears came through the voice channel.
Jason.
"Boss. I have something to say. After I say it, you decide whether to continue using me or throw me into the Abyss Watcher's room."
Allen didn't reply. Wait.
Only the static from the microphone whistling through the channel.
"Victor Stone and Daniel Hawke know each other." Jason slowed his speech, "Privately. When I was in Black Serpent's Dark Side, I accompanied Victor to two meetings at unknown locations. The other party was Hawke."
A cold laugh came from the channel.
"The S-class guild leader and the head of GWA's New York branch colluded privately. This news is enough to keep the Bureau investigating him for six months."
"The meeting's contents are classified as Sigma-class." Jason ignored Lina. "But I overheard a word outside the door once."
"'Sealing Protocol'." The predecessor organization of the Purifiers.
Victor and Hawke were both involved.
By handing over this information, Jason cut off his escape route.
Once Victor discovers that Sigma-7 leaked this history, Jason's life will no longer be his own.
"Stay outside the warehouse. Keep watching." Allen cut off the voice.
The memo was cleared. New lines were drawn.
Hawk. Omega-3 clearance. Device manufacturing. Knows Victor.
Victor. S-class Awakened. Publicly endorses. Secretly has a deal with Hawke.
The Purifiers. Uses devices authorized by Hawke. Detonates the core.
Three forces intertwined.
He was in the very center. Everyone wanted to use him. No one had revealed their full hand.
A finger traced a word in the center of the screen.
"Me." A downward arrow was drawn below. The second line was added.
"Only the underground doesn't lie to me." Six in the morning. Port Authority Terminal. Allen stepped out of the turnstile.
The Manhattan skyline took on a murky gray-blue hue in the morning light.
He didn't return to the Red Hook area.
Subway transfer. Exit.
The block opposite the GWA New York headquarters.
The corner coffee shop had just opened. The Americano cup reeked of a poorly roasted, bitter smell.
He sat down by the window. Staring through the glass at the side entrance of the GWA building.
Seven o'clock sharp.
An unmarked black sedan pulled up at the bottom of the side entrance steps.
Daniel Hawke opened the car door.
Dark blue trench coat. Gray scarf.
The rhythm of his leather shoes on the sidewalk was exactly the same as that evening in the community center corridor.
Smooth. Calm. There was no sense of urgency.
Allen's shadow perception seeped through the window cracks.
Cleansing himself on the ground. Avoiding the energy fields of passersby. Crossing the zebra crossing.
Reaching Hawke's feet.
Climbing upwards.
Zero.
Still zero energy fluctuations.
In an area like GWA headquarters, where high-concentration supernatural energy converges, even an ordinary person would be exposed to weak background radiation. Even street vendors selling hot dogs have F-level energy residue on them.
But Hawke's body was a perfect black hole. It absorbed all scanning signals, returning no data.
C-level perception couldn't detect a ripple. Either his level was high enough to completely overwhelm detection, or he carried some kind of shielding relic.
Lina's frequency was switched into the headphones.
"Three devices from last night. I examined the wreckage."
"The second one, the one the Watchers dug out and threw onto the open ground to detonate. There was a residual energy signature in the shockwave."
"I've seen it on the black market before. 'Core Resonance Bomb.' Developed by the military, specifically designed to penetrate the energy fields of underground cities. This kind of thing isn't in the GWA's public arsenal."
"It's an off-budget project." Allen's paper cup left a brown circular mark on the table.
Off-budget project. Omega-3 license.
Hawk's reach was deeper than anyone thought.
A series of golden notifications popped up on the management panel.
[Brooklyn Ruins—24-hour BP output surpasses 10,000.]
[Achieved a new all-time high.] Victor's public statement began to pay off.
Profit details scroll down.
Black Serpent Elite Team. First batch to enter at 6 AM this morning.
Twelve-person composition. All B-rank or higher.
Twilight Raider Area. The average heart rate of the twelve people reached 142.
Room 51. Deep-sea Lizard Zone. Time taken: 40 minutes.
Room 80.
Facing the Abyss Watcher.
In the replay, the first heavily armored warrior charging raised his tower shield.
The Watcher's greatsword didn't slash, but rather slammed flat.
The dark red blade struck the surface of the tower shield.
The heavily armored warrior's arms were broken. The tower shield dented inward, breaking three of his ribs.
At the moment of contact, his heart rate soared to 190.
What followed was a one-sided numerical crushing. The Watcher shredded the entire formation within five minutes.
Total annihilation.
The twelve B-rank Awakened were forcibly teleported out of the dungeon.
Every failure, every rise in fear, pushed up the BP production curve.
This was a high-powered money-printing machine operating underground in the Red Hook Zone.
BP Balance: 19,200.
A global map unfolds on the retina.
Zooming in on the New York area.
The location of the fifth underground city must be determined.
Underground Manhattan. Two kilometers from the core of the nearest natural underground city, "The Throat of the Abyss."
One of the twenty-seven eruption nodes.
But Manhattan's underground space is ten times more complex than Brooklyn's. Subway tunnels, water pipes, fiber optic cables, GWA's underground energy monitoring network.
Building an underground city here is like digging a tunnel under someone's surveillance cameras.
The success rate of remote deployment is zero.
Personal presence is necessary.
A paper cup is picked up. A chilled Americano is poured down the throat.
The bitter, burnt taste stimulates the nerves.
Standing up.
A level one warning pops up on the management panel.
Not an underground city system notification. Not Robert. Not Hawke.
It's a special notification from the DeepRift forum.
A new post. The poster's ID is a string of garbled characters never seen before.
The post has no title.
The text contains only one line.
"Architect_00, we know you're not in New York. You've been in Washington for seven hours."
"Next time you leave city, remember to change your shoes."
Attached image below.
Screenshot from CCTV at Union Station Exit D3.
In the grainy image, a young man wearing thin-rimmed glasses walks out of the turnstile. His face is pixelated.
But the edges of his white sneakers are stained with the rust-colored mud characteristic of the Red Hook District.
The Cleaners aren't just an action team. They have an intelligence network.
And they've already tracked his movements.
Allen's left foot dangles from the glass door of the coffee shop.
The doorbell rings with a crisp "ding."